I stepped out this evening to check the garlic after another really scorching hot day, and realized that they really are drying down faster than I thought. I decided to take up some of the garlic from my porcelain grow out bed right away that were down to 4 leaves, and after cleaning them up I took a pic to compare the size of that row of extra 'full size' cloves vs the third year Music from bulbils (2nd divided bulb).
With the tight spacing and probably overall not as good conditions, even the full size cloves only produced small bulbs, but some of the 3rd year bulbil growout Music are just as big, a little shy of 2 inches. I expect my main crop porcelains to be plenty bigger, which I also spaced more generously. But still I think these 3rd year cloves will produce good sized bulbs next year.
Some of the smaller plants turned out to have just two cloves, and this is a good outcome for sizing up seed stock, as those two cloves are a good size. Some others have three cloves and two of them are large one small. So you can't always bank on multiplying your stock by X4, but you can certainly get to full size bulbs in a few years, with porcelains like Music.
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